A couple in Delaware has been arrested after their daughter accused them of waterboarding her as punishment. The 11 year old girl’s father, pediatrician Melvin Morse, reportedly held his daughter’s face under the stream of a running faucet, forcing wat...

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A daughter who claimed she suffered waterboarding as a punishment from her mother’s boyfriend has come forward recently and brought this criminal case into the public spotlight. The man accused of committing this cruel crime is a former pediatrician who was said to have held the child — the victim was an 11-year-old girl at the time — under a running faucet and tortured her for a number of years. Stuff World News reports this Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2014, that the opening statements for the trial were recently initiated, and a U.S. prosecutor accused the man of “exercising total control” over her.

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Photo File

The waterboarding daughter crime is being judged in a formal court case over the accused ex-doctor, Melvin Morse. An attorney general portrayed Morse as a domineering “lord and master” of the household that included his girlfriend and her daughter. He is also charged of possessing a brutal attitude and repeatedly abusing his stepdaughter for several years while her mother was said to be subdued into subservience.

However, Melvin Morse’s defense attorney has appealed to the jurors that both the girl saying she was waterboarded as well as her mother, Pauline, are simply lying. He went on to argue that several of their allegations are untrue and conflicting, while the accusations of waterboarding under a running faucet are not clearly substantiated.

The attorney went on to assert that the stepdaughter’s own mother confessed to investigators that the waterboarding incident was in fact only forced "hair-washing” that was often threatened as a punishment of sorts. The 60-year-old Morse has since pleaded not guilty to charges of assault and child endangerment.

As an ex-pediatrician, Morse is said to have written a number of books involving paranormal science explorations, mysteries, and near-death experiences that often feature children as the main characters.

According to the press release on the waterboarding daughter incident:

“The allegations of waterboarding came after Morse was accused of grabbing the girl by the ankle in July 2012 and, as her younger sister watched, then proceeding to drag her across a dirty gravel driveway. He was arrested on misdemeanor endangerment and assault charges before soon being released on bail … When the girl, an 11-year-old child at the time, was then interviewed, she told investigators that Melvin Morse also had disciplined her by holding her face under a running faucet at least four times since 2009, a punishment she said he had called 'waterboarding.'"